Why I love reading Simenon

I've been on a bit of a Simenon kick after reading The Man Who Watched Trains Go By. Having enjoyed that book immensely, I decided to try my hand at The Strangers In the House. I'm not not to far into the book, but already in the first chapter, I found another glaring example of Simenon's simple mastery of writing riveting prose. I'm not giving anything away, since the flap copy on the book details it specifically, by telling you that the book opens with the main character, Loursat, discovering that someone has been shot in an upstairs room of his house. In the scene below, Simenon -- in perfectly crafted prose, not an extra bit of fat or superfluous description -- captures the moment of discovery when Loursat first hears the sound of a gunshot. Read a bit:

Normally few sounds reached him in his study. There was Joséphine, of course, who slept in a room immediately above. She went upstairs at exactly ten o'clock every night, and stumped about overhead for a good half hour before finally getting into bed.

But Phine had got into bed at least an hour ago. The sound he had just heard was quite an unusual one, in fact it was precisely its strangeness that had roused Loursat from his torpor.

At first he thought of the crack of a whip, a common enough sound to hear in the early morning when the garbage-men went on their rounds.

But this noise hadn't come from outside. Nor was it the crack of a whip. There was more weight in it than that, more percussion, so much so that he had felt a slight shock in his chest before his ears actually heard it.

As he looked up, listening, the expression on his face was one of slight annoyance at the intrusion. It might have been taken for anxiety, but it wasn't that.

What was so impressive was the silence that followed. A silence more compact, more positive than any ordinary one, but which yet seemed full of strained vibrations.

He didn't get up from his chair at once. He filled his glass, emptied it, put his cigarette back in his mouth, then heaved himself up and went over to the door, where he listened for a second before opening it.

When he switched on the light in the passage, three dusty lamps lit up receding stretches of emptiness. There was no one there, nothing except that weighty tense silence.

"Nicole!" he called softly.

He was certain now that it was a shot that he had heard. He still tried to persuade himself that it might have come from outside, but he didn't really believe it.

That description of the silence is so taut and perfect that it carries you out of the room, taking you all the way upstairs to the mysterious location of the gun shot. You are no longer standing with Loursat. Instead you are in the room, hearing the echo of the gun, standing with all parties involved, caught up in that tense moment of aftershock, when everyone is still can't believe what has just happened. Then Simenon takes you back downstairs, back to Loursat, to share his disbelief in the sound he just heard.

Now that's writing.